Birthdays at Bergamot Station and a Filipino American home: The best of L.A. arts this weekend
Congratulations on making it to Friday. I’m arts and culture writer Ashley Lee, rewarding you with another edition of Essential Arts with my colleague Jessica Gelt, complete with the goings-on you might have missed and the Times’ top picks for going out this weekend.
Best bets: On our radar this week
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1. “God Will Do the Rest”
Nicholas Pilapil’s new stage dramedy, making its world premiere via Artists at Play and Latino Theater Co., peeks inside the tough but loving home of a Filipino American family for its matriarch’s milestone birthday weekend. I laughed hard when I saw this play last week; it felt as if I was watching a ‘90s sitcom, but one that’s set in a household of Santo Niño prayers, karaoke and chicken adobo. Its universal message has lingered with me, and I’m already planning to see it again with a few family members. Performances run 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 29. Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles. latinotheaterco.org
2. Bergamot Station Arts Center’s 30th Anniversary Celebration
Times contributor David A. Keeps is amped that the Santa Monica collective of 18 galleries has a daylong fete of opening receptions, ongoing exhibitions and live jazz. His highlights: “David Hockney iPhone and iPad drawings and color copy machine prints at Leslie Sacks Gallery, Greg Colson’s witty-deadpan conceptual infographic and pie-chart paintings at Craig Krull Gallery, and Galeire XII’s ‘The Schindler House, A Love Affair,’ an exhibit of cinematic projections and solarized photographs by contemporary portraitist Mona Kuhn, shot on location at the modernist architect [Rudolph] Schindler’s 1920s concrete home in West Hollywood.”
11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica. bergamotstation.com
3. “Beatriz da Costa: (Un)disciplinary Tactics”
Here’s an East Hollywood PST pick, beginning Saturday and running through the end of the year. According to Times contributor Carren Jao in our PST guide, Beatriz da Costa’s “interventions shed a critical light on the role and cost of technology in human life. Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions revives many of her thought-provoking projects, including a demonstration garden filled with cancer-fighting plants, herbs and fungi, which will be accompanied by a cooking workshop; an air-pollution monitoring system will run with the aid of pigeons.” Sept. 7 through Jan. 5. Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles. pst.art
— Ashley Lee
The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY
3 Faces of Steve: Sondheim in Concert Singers Angelina Réaux, Michael Sokol and Bernardo Bermudez perform 14 songs from Sondheim’s works.
Through Sept. 29. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. Los Angeles. odysseytheatre.com
One Person, One Vote? Maximina Juson’s documentary analyzes the electoral college and its impact on U.S. democracy.
Friday-Sept. 12. The Culver Theater, 9500 Culver Blvd., Culver City. onepersononevote.co
Under the Oaks A multimedia adaptation of Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” with a string quartet score drawn from works by composers Philip Glass, Caroline Shaw and Louis Andriessen.
7:30 p.m. Friday and Sept. 12-13. Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. theatricum.com/under-the-oaks
SATURDAY
Demolition Matt Letscher’s new play explores the dynamic between a blue-collar Michigan man and his boss’ college-bound son over the course of one summer.
Through Oct. 13. Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice. pacificresidenttheatre.org
Future Imaginaries “Indigenous Art, Fashion, Technology” reveals the increase in futurism in contemporary Indigenous art through the work of artists such as Andy Everson, Ryan Singer, Neal Ambrose Smith, Wendy Red Star and Virgil Ortiz. Part of PST Art.
Through June 21, 2026. The Autry Museum in Griffith Park, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles. theautry.org
SUNDAY
Heartbeat of Mexico Festival A free outdoor event celebrating Mexican and Mexican American culture includes Aztec dancers, mariachis, live painting, a chalk art contest and crafts.
Noon-7 p.m. Sunday. Aitken Arts Plaza at Chapman University, 1 University Dr., Orange. muscocenter.org
Culture news and the SoCal scene
If you’re a die-hard Gustavo Dudamel fan, Times’ Classical Music Critic Mark Swed has good news for you. Even though the beloved conductor is scheduled to leave the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the New York Philharmonic in 2026 when his contract is up, Dudamel will always consider Los Angeles a home. Swed sat down with Dudamel at a cafe in Salzburg to hear about his plans for the next two years, and beyond. None of those plans, he says, involve leaving L.A. in the rear-view mirror.
In a Times opinion piece, Jon Christensen and Ursula K. Heise — founders of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA — use the unveiling of three new dioramas at the Natural History Museum, part of this year’s PST ART festival, as a jumping-off point to examine what dioramas have represented throughout history and how they might evolve in the future. “Dioramas should remind us that nature, even and especially at its most authentic, never comes to us as unalloyed reality. It is always filtered through layers of worldviews, social practices, historical memories and anticipations of the future,” they write.
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Los Angeles-based artist and writer Thomas Lawson is one of eight visual arts writers to win this year’s prestigious Rabkin Prize, which comes with an unrestricted grant of $50,000 and is sometimes referred to as the Pulitzer Prize of arts writing. The winners were chosen by an independent jury, which noted, “Thomas Lawson’s gift as a critic and arts writer is reflected in not only the longevity of his career and work but also his own practices as artist and arts educator.” Lawson was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and is a former dean of the School of Art at California Institute for the Arts. Previous Rabkin Prize winners include former Times art and design columnist and Essential Arts founder Carolina Miranda.
The Las Vegas City Council officially granted 1.5 acres of land in Symphony Park to the upcoming Las Vegas Museum of Art. The 90,000-square-foot structure is estimated to cost $150 million and is projected to open in 2028. Pritzker Prize-winning design architect Francis Kéré will serve as the building’s design architect. The new LVMA will not be a collecting institution, and controversy ensued when it was announced earlier this year that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art would be sharing its collection with the museum.
Actors Rachel Bloom and Matthew Morrison are set to guest star as “Jesus” in “Reefer Madness the Musical” at the Whitley Theatre in Hollywood. Bloom will take on the role through Saturday and Sunday; and Morrison will nab it Sept. 11-15.
—Jessica Gelt
And last but not least
Bravo to these politically minded Minnesotans for, in their own way, planting the seed.
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